


Trouble Ahead

by Saetha



Series: O Swallow, have mercy on them [Febuwhump 2021 Prompt Fills] [11]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Injury, Brief Implications of Abuse, Case Fic, FebuWhump2021, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Hallucinations, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt/Comfort, Jaskier | Dandelion Saves the Day, M/M, Mind Control, mention of past animal (horse) death, no beta we die like everyone who’s ever had the misfortune of enraging our favourite feral bard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29355957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saetha/pseuds/Saetha
Summary: “You did well, freeing them,” Geralt says, pressing down one hand on the cloak around his arm that already begins to show a few red spots.“Well. It was what you told me to do, wasn’t it?” A wry smile curls around Jaskier’s lips briefly, although it doesn’t reach up to the worried expression in his eyes.*Geralt and Jaskier try to take out a rogue mage who specialises in mind control. It doesn't go as planned.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: O Swallow, have mercy on them [Febuwhump 2021 Prompt Fills] [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138178
Comments: 6
Kudos: 94
Collections: febuwhump 2021





	Trouble Ahead

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually the first fic I wrote for this month (for prompt 2 back then before I decided to swap things around) before I started falling headfirst down the Geskel rabbithole lmao. Usually, I write Geralt more as the traumatised whiny sarcastic nerd he is in the books and games, but this one is a bit closer to the traumatised grump of the Netflix show. Jaskier, on the other hand, is like 90% show!Jaskier haha. 
> 
> Today's prompt was: hallucinations.

Geralt hears the screams when they are still miles away from the village, the high, keening notes piercing through his sensitive hearing. It is a sound he has heard before, and yet it never fails to surround his heart and clench around it in a fierce sudden pain – the howls of grief, of loss, of one watching their entire world collapse into nothing but darkness within a few seconds. His hands tighten around Roach’s reins.

“Everything okay?” Jaskier, perceptive as ever, looks up at him from his seat on top of the little mule they bought in the last town.

Geralt grunts and frowns a little.

“Trouble ahead,” he says. “Not sure what kind.”

“Oh, like always then.” Jaskier sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Do let me know if the ominous _trouble ahead_ turns into a more concrete sort of danger, will you. I don’t want a repeat from last week where something is halfway through eating my horse before I even realise what is happening.”

“Hmm.” Geralt rolls his shoulders a little, trying to distract himself from the beginning of a headache that is starting to settle between his temples at the screams that are slowly getting louder and louder. He still feels remorse at that particular incident and the death of Jaskier’s animal. At least Roach escaped unharmed.

He becomes twitchier the closer they get to the settlement. Something here is wrong, beyond the wailing and screams that are so loud that even Jaskier can hear them. He cannot pinpoint the exact sources, but it makes his teeth ache and sets every single one of his senses on edge.

The wailing comes from the first house they come across, set slightly apart from the others. Strangely, there are no townsfolk about – even without the racket, there should have been a few, tending to the fields, doing their daily activities. The only sign of life besides the screaming, however, is the curling of smoke above several chimneys.

Geralt dismounts and barely takes the time to tie Roach’s reins to the post in front of the house before knocking on the door. There is no reply, so he pushes it open and enters – only to find himself faced with the urge to clap his hand over his ears to protect his sensitive hearing. A woman who, by rights, should probably have lost her voice hours ago, is on the floor, gently swaying back and forth and evidently the source of all the noise. Her fingers are gripping at her unwashed hair, ripping it out in clumps, her face more like that of a corpse than of a living person. Another, younger woman is sitting next to her, trying to comfort her to little avail. A third is standing at a table, mixing together some herbs. Geralt takes a sniff and recognises them as ingredients for a sleeping potion.

“Please!” The woman is screaming. “No, please no! I can’t take this anymore. Please, make it stop. _Please_.” Whatever her eyes are seeing, it is not this room in front of her, not even this house.

The younger woman notices him first, her mouth opening in surprise. She is quick on her feet, beckoning him outside where her voice can actually be heard over the crying.

“You’re a Witcher?” she asks, before Geralt can even open his mouth.

“The White Wolf of Rivia, yes!” That is Jaskier, of course. Geralt rolls his eyes as the young woman’s gaze flickers back and forth between them. “Surely, the ballads of his deeds have travelled even here.”

“We might be in need of one,” the woman says, her face twitching in pain and sympathy at yet another keening noise from inside the hut. “Please, we don’t have much, but we could pay in coin-“

Geralt raises his hand in a calming gesture. “Tell me what’s happening.”

*

“Geralt, are you _sure_ this is a good idea?” Jaskier has lowered his voice into a whisper, but even at such low volume it is uncomfortably loud in Geralt’s ears.

“Do you have a better one?” Geralt hisses back. Jaskier shouldn’t be here. It is enough that he has to worry about himself during an impending fight, having to make sure that Jaskier remains safe just makes it even worse, even though the bard has been able to defend himself more than once before. Rather capably so, in fact.

“Perhaps we could simply ask him nicely to leave? Again?”

“We’ve tried that.” Geralt rolls his eyes. “You saw his response.”

Jaskier only sighs in reply. He knows as well as Geralt does that the rogue mage won’t budge from his current abode unless forced.

“We need to be quick once we are inside,” Geralt reminds him. “Stay away from him, before he can cast his curse on you as well. Jana talked about prisoners the mage might be keeping – go and find them whilst I keep him busy.”

“Yes, yes I know.” Jaskier rolls his eyes, but there is a seriousness in his expression that belies his exasperation. He knows of the amount of trust that Geralt is placing in him with these instructions. Knows, too, that he should obey him to the letter, or he will end up like Jana’s mother, trapped in an endless cycle of her worst memories, unable to sleep or escape. They both hope that the mage’s death might finally free her from her torment.

Geralt reaches out, wordlessly placing a hand on Jaskier’s shoulder and squeezing once. He doesn’t quite have the bard’s talent for poetry and flowery words, but they have developed their own language in touch alone. _Stay safe. It will be fine_. Jaskier flashes a smile in his direction, nods. Geralt nods back, drawing two potions out of his pocket. He closes his eyes, waits for the familiar wave of nausea to wash through him as they take effect.

“Let’s go.” His voice is deep and inhuman, and he doesn’t wait for Jaskier to reply. He doesn’t like his bard to see him this way, so utterly monstrous and alien to what a human should be. From Jana they know that the mage likes to walk along the battlements at this time of night, although why she didn’t know.

Geralt and Jaskier steal their way into the fort via a long-forgotten sewage canal, now thankfully dry, although Jaskier still wrinkles his nose at the smell. He remains quiet, however. They split up when they reach the cellars, Jaskier searching for the captives as promised, and Geralt making his way to find the mage. His sword is at the ready in one hand, the fingers of the other already curling into the shape _Yrden_. This mage seems far too powerful for any of the other signs to do much damage to him. At least this way he might be contained.

The mage is standing on the battlements, just as promised. Geralt raises his hand, about to sign _Yrden_ , when the mage turns around and smiles.

“And here I thought Witchers would only hunt monsters,” he says. Geralt snarls and casts the sign. The ground around the mage flares up in brilliant purple – and becomes dark and lifeless just as quickly.

“A passable attempt,” the mage laughs. “For one of you mutants, at least. My turn.”

He raises his hand and Geralt, about to spring into motion and use his sword instead of his magic, finds himself unable to move. He growls, thinking of Jaskier, alone in the depths of the castle, and strains against his bonds. He cannot fail. Must not. Something sharp slashes against his legs from behind and he falls to his knees, unable to keep a grunt of pain from escaping his lips. The mage hums to himself, apparently quite satisfied.

“I’ve always wondered whether this particular elixir works as well on Witchers as it does on actual humans,” he ponders as he walks closer. Geralt is unable to resist him, cannot even move his fingers when the mage pours the mixture down his throat and forces him to swallow.

 _No_. Geralt squeezes his eyes shut, reminded of Sorel Degerlund and the terrifying moments when the scorpion poison had been creeping through his body. He had promised himself then that he would never get caught like this ever again. He strains against the invisible bonds with all his might and thinks that perhaps, he might be able to move one hand after all, when the world around him tilts and shifts.

He can still see the courtyard and the mage round him when his vision stabilises again, but it is blurry, as if separated from him by a thin curtain of glass. He sees shapes worm their way out of the earth, no more than thin spectres of smoke at first before they take more solid form. He recognises Renfri and his heart plummets into his stomach. The striga princess, bleeding from her throat where Geralt hurt her more than he’d meant to. Eskel is there, too, one half of his face torn and bloodied. The boys he grew up with, screaming and twisting in their bonds as the Trials claimed their lives one by one.

Geralt wants to turn and look away, wants to scream in rage and beg their forgiveness, but all that comes out of his throat is a broken sound. He can feel his fingers twitch in the desperate desire – to get to them or run away, he doesn’t know, but to do _something_ at least. He can hear someone cursing softly behind him, the mage’s voice unnaturally distorted.

“Your resistance is incredible. You Witchers really are made from stronger stuff.” Someone grabs his hair from behind, pulls back his head to bare his throat and force his lips apart and Geralt snarls.

“That’s enough.” A different voice, one that he knows, that makes him feel comfortable and safe. “Let him go.”

Geralt barely has the time to make sense of what his addled senses are telling him when a shriek pierces through his sensitive hearing, sending a spike of pain directly into his head.

“You! What did you do?” There is a note of panic in the mage’s voice now, and the spell with which he is holding Geralt down is beginning to wobble and weaken and with it, the phantoms in front of him begin to lose shape. Geralt growls, trying to force his useless body into submission once more, trying to force himself to _move_. He doesn’t have to try for long – the shriek sounds out again, much louder this time, so loud that it disorients him for a second. When his thoughts clear again, the invisible force holding him is suddenly gone and he finds himself with hands and knees on the ground, panting harshly.

There is movement in front of him and the sudden smell of blood in the air, sharp and metallic. He shakes his head and tries to clear his thoughts.

“Geralt!” Jaskier’s voice – of course it was Jaskier, who else could it have been – lashes through the air, jolting him fully back into reality. His head snaps up, just in time to see a rusalka slash open the mage’s throat with a single swipe of her long fingernails.

She watches the mage crumple to the ground, her entire upper body heaving. Her back is turned to Geralt but he can see how dirty she is, how thin and emaciated, how unkempt her hair. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out where she has come from. It seems like Jaskier has found the aforementioned prisoners.

“Geralt!” Jaskier calls out again. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine!” Geralt shouts back, although it comes out a lot rougher and far less loud than he’d intended. The rusalka whips around at the noise, eyes wide and unseeing. Geralt raises his hands and walks slowly towards her.

“Easy, there. You’re safe,” he says, but from the expression in her face he can already tell that she isn’t listening. He reaches his hands out slowly, palms up. “You’re safe,” he repeats.

She looks at him for a short moment before she shrieks again, disorienting Geralt and sending a stabbing pain through his head. He stumbles backwards, at the same moment as she springs into action, leaping directly at him. Without the stumble she would probably have opened his throat, disoriented and weakened as he still is from the short-lived fight against the mage and the hallucinations he had sent into this mind. Now, she just catches his arm, her long nails that are more like claws at this point gauging deep groves into the skin of his left arm, ripping off his vambrace in the process.

“Geralt!” Jaskier’s voice sounds panicked now, but it does draw the rusalka’s attention away from him, at least. He knows this wasn’t a targeted attack, a simple reaction of blind panic instead. She seems to at least recognise the person who freed her, because with another ear-piercingly loud shriek she bounds past Jaskier and vanishes over the walls of the Keep.

“Fuck.” Geralt looks down at his arm, the puddle of blood growing steadily larger on the ground. The rusalka’s nails have dug deeply into his flesh; he can see the white of bone shimmering in several places. If it wasn’t for the effects of Swallow still cursing through his body, he would probably be already unconscious.

“That doesn’t look good.” The fact that Geralt hasn’t even heard Jaskier approach tells him just how badly injured he must be. Jaskier is standing in front him now, nimble fingers feeling him over for any other injuries before looking down at his arm again.

“It’s not,” Geralt confirms wryly. “Will need stitches, most likely.”

“And for us to be gone from this wretched place,” Jaskier added. “Wait.” He walks over to the dead mage and pulls his cloak from his shoulders, grimacing slightly when he brings it over and begins to wrap it around Geralt’s arm to staunch the worst of the bleeding. Geralt shares his distate at having to use the dirty fabric in contact with the fresh wounds. However, same as Jaskier, he doesn’t fancy staying in this place any longer than necessary, despite the mage’s death.

Jaskier lets out a long, trembling breath and suddenly it occurs to Geralt what just happened, and the role the bard has played in it. He is no stranger to seeing Geralt injured and has picked up enough medical knowledge over the years to insist on helping with patching him up, but he usually doesn’t outright participate in fights, unless he is forced to, something that Geralt can hardly fault him for.

“You did well, freeing them,” he says, pressing down one hand on the cloak around his arm that already begins to show a few red spots.

“Well. It was what you told me to do, wasn’t it?” A wry smile curls around Jaskier’s lips briefly, although it doesn’t reach up to the worried expression in his eyes.

“If I remember correctly, I told you to stay hidden, to not confront the mage directly.” Geralt lifts his eyebrows. Jaskier is helping him up, and Geralt suppresses a groan at the sudden feeling of dizziness.

“’Thank you for saving my life, Jaskier. How lovely of you not to let me become the mage’s newest victim, Jaskier.’” Jaskier rolls his eyes and sighs. “If I had followed your orders, you would be dead by now. Or screaming as you are trapped in some sort of hallucination, like the unfortunate woman from earlier,” he points out.

Geralt hates to admit it, but he has a point.

“You should be more careful,” is all he says. He gives himself a mental push before he adds: “Thank you.”

“Well, at least something.” Jaskier sighs again, mustering him critically. “Can you walk on your own? I can go get the horses, make it easier for us to get back to the village. Or do you want to stop outside to take care of the arm first?”

“I can walk.” Geralt grits his teeth, trying to prove the truth of his words. He isn’t completely successful, judging by Jaskier’s stare, but the bard is wise enough not to say anything. “And I trust you more than I would any village healer.” They might have finished the job, but he has had enough bad experiences with humans even after finishing a contract successfully that he doesn’t really want to rely on their kindness to look after him and patch him up.

“I’ll be right back,” Jaskier promises, before jogging off into the night. Time seems to become slightly fuzzy again, but suddenly Jaskier is back, leading their horses. Geralt leans against Roach with a grateful little noise. They make their way far enough from the keep that Geralt can neither see nor smell it anymore before they stop for the rest of the night. He helps Jaskier light a fire and finally settles back with a sigh, leaning against their travel packs.

“Let me see.” Jaskier is careful when he wets down the cloak around Geralt’s arm before slowly unwrapping it, trying to be as gentle as possible and not to pull the wounds back open again where the cloak is still stuck to them. Geralt grunts with pain but is otherwise quiet. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he has come to appreciate Jaskier’s ministrations. It is nice, not having to constantly look after himself, even if the bard can sometimes be overbearing in his worry.

Jaskier dips a cloth into the hot water from the fire and begins cleaning the cuts on Geralt’s arm. His touch is gentle and he keeps apologising quietly whenever his motions send another jolt of pain through Geralt’s body, causing him to tense up. Geralt watches his face as he works, nothing the tightness of worry around his eyes, the way that the fire reflects on his cheek and seems to bathe his skin in gold.

“There,” Jaskier finally says, sitting back and looking at his work. The shallower cuts have already begun to heal, but the two larger ones are still bleeding sluggishly, threating to undo all of his efforts. “Do you want stitches?”

“Only the large ones,” Geralt grunts. Jaskier nods and goes to fetch their medical kit where they keep all the necessary supplies. Geralt realises that they are running low on more than a few supplies and makes a mental note to try and stock up in the village tomorrow.

The bard’s nimble fingers make quick work of the stitches. Geralt concentrates on breathing through his nose, trying to banish the pain to the back of his mind. The fact that he’s used to it doesn’t mean that it hurts any less, and today in particular he is tired, and his nerve ends seem to be almost flayed.

“Almost done,” Jaskier murmurs when he is halfway up the second cut. There is worry in his gaze when he looks at Geralt. “Think you can hold on a little longer?”

“Got no choice, do I?” Geralt shoots back and Jaskier laughs.

“Well, I could always clobber you over the head until you are unconscious, but I doubt you’d prefer that.” Geralt only snorts in reply. No, no he doesn’t prefer that. Nonetheless he is grateful when Jaskier is finally done, leaning back with a sigh, closing his eyes and forcing his tense muscles to relax. For a while, just concentrates on his breathing, listening to the night outside and Jaskier puttering around their camp, cleaning their medical supplies, fetching some salve and fresh bandages.

Jaskier returns and presses something into his hand. Geralt opens his eyes to find that it’s a vial of Swallow, which he knocks back with a grateful sigh, now that he can be sure he is no longer under the influence of the remnants of the mage’s spell.

“You knew the rusalka would attack, didn’t you,” Jaskier says quietly as he spreads the salve on Geralt’s arm and begins to wrap it in the bandages he’s brought. Geralt shrugs, as well as he is able to with just one shoulder.

“It was a distinct possibility, yes,” he admits. “But I’d rather she vent her well-earned fury on me than you.”

Jaskier exhales sharply and shakes his head. There are clearly so many things on his tongue, admonishments and anger and warnings. He doesn’t voice any of them, however. They’ve had this particular argument before. Instead, he finishes with the bandages and leans forward, pressing his forehead to Geralt’s and closing his eyes.

“You worried me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Geralt brings his healthy arm up and wraps his hand around the back of Jaskier’s neck until he relents and kisses him. “Thank you,” he whispers into the kiss, so quietly that he isn’t even sure that Jaskier can hear it. Jaskier just hums under his breath in response.

He curls up next to him once they part and Geralt lets his eyes fall closed again, finally giving in to his body’s desire to sleep and heal itself. Jaskier’s breathing next to him is quiet and measured, his heartbeat a reassuring rhythm.

 _Safe_.


End file.
